Column 15 – Cut Your Losses by The FlyLady, Marla Cilley

We all make mistakes! This is a fact of living. So why do we beat ourselves up when we have made a bad choice. I think it is because deep down inside we are doing what has been done to us all of our lives; punishing ourselves. This has got to stop.

Instead of admitting that we have made a bad choice we keep trying to make that decision work. Maybe we should take a lesson from business and cut our losses and move on. Instead we keep trying to fix things to make them better. Clutter is clutter no matter what form it takes.

You can’t organize clutter; you can only get rid of it! I want your home to be filled with things that make you smile. Our lives are too short to continually deal with that pink elephant in the living room. One time a dear friend was moving from a home where she had lived twenty-seven years. It was hard for her to let go of things. Eventually she came up with a plan. If she had any doubt about whether something should be packed; she would set it in the main path to the truck. On the first day she would gingerly walk around the item. The next day she pushed it aside and if on the third day she kicked it; it when to the curb. This showed her that she really didn’t love it as much as she had originally thought she had.

We can decorate that pink elephant but it is still a pink elephant. It is sucking the life right out of you. You spend your whole day doing your best to make it fit. God knows we don’t want to admit that we made the mistake of bringing that pink elephant home in the first place; that we wasted money and worst of all our time. We just keep plodding along; hoping that the pink elephant will not get mad and become the bull in the china shop. The sad part is that it already has. Just being in your living room it is destroying the most important thing in your home and that is you!

Many years ago I had a diseased gallbladder. I was sick all the time. This gallbladder was toxic to me. Once it was removed I was able to get on with my life. Relationships can be like this too. We have all had people in our lives who suck the life right out of us. You may be with someone right now who is toxic to you. You may have a friend that uses you to make themselves feel superior. You may be struggling with an abuse situation that you hope and pray will get better. They don’t get better. They get worse. This abuse can mean a lot of things: physical, emotional, sexual, drug, alcohol and financial.

It is time to cut your losses and strap on your wings to FLY; Finally Loving Yourself. For when you are FLYing, you realize when something is clutter in your life. As nurturers we really do want to help everyone but in the end, we can only help ourselves. This is not a selfish attitude. It is all about self-preservation. This type of clutter is going to destroy your spirit.

Accept that you made a mistake! Forgive yourself and cut your losses by decluttering. In business if you lose a nickel on everything you sell and you sell a million of them; you are losing a million nickels. Stop the blood-letting!

It is time to FLY by Decluttering!

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